Letter to the Governor Álvaro
Dear Governor, I write to you today, so that you may hear my plea for acceptance of my people. I write to represent the colony of Maroons that I myself am a part of. We wish for you people in the colonial society to recognize us as people, as an established colony, and for us to work together and not fight. We’ve gone through terrible things that we want you to recognize you’ve done to us and what were willing to do get our true freedom. This letter represent not only my Quilombo, but the Quilombos spread all over this land that will continue to fight for our right to be free
You know who we are sir, we are the people and descendants that you dragged from their homeland and forced us into slavery in a place to was new to us. We were forced into slavery by the white man making us work for what felt like an eternity in the sugar cane fields, to the point of near death. You would kill us in the most gruesome ways when we simply wanted to see a friend or a lover. We are the same people who at first tried to negotiate with you the masters, the overseers, and all the people who ruled over us. To you it seemed too much to provide us with the simplest of worldly things such as water, food, or less work. Are you surprised that not just us but any man would want to run from such atrocities? You see us as objects at your disposal, but we are people who have had enough of the horrors and ill treatment you have put us through.
I was but a child when I pulled into slavery, but I remember all that was of my homeland and the family that you tore me away from. I was put to work with other children on a plantation scared and alone. I did as they told me and never questioned why for as I saw from the other children I would have been beaten badly. When I was of age my master put me in the field to chop “cana” and that was when I experienced what horrors everyone went through. They worked me until I could barely stand at which point I was whipped bloody and put right back to work. I went through that for years until I could no longer do it. I ran, for anything was better than the life I was forced to live and by god’s grace I had found a group of people just like me who had escaped their life of slavery and from there we stayed hidden slowly growing and now years later we have become a colony.
You may see us as all the same but we all come from different parts, speak different languages, and have different cultures. I can assure that amongst the slaves that you still have there represents not one race, one skin color, but in each one an entire culture unbeknownst to the man that he stands next to in the fields everyday. Not only us Africans but also the Indians of the land who are angered at the people that destroyed who they were and took their land. What you should find amazing is that even with the struggles of communication and cooperation amongst ourselves we are still able to establish these colonies, and it is all because of you. You made us adopt new languages and assimilated us into to your cultures and practices. For that I can thank you for you helped quilombos such as Palmares would never have been able to become such grand places.
Look to Palmares as an example of what we can become and who we are. You think of us as savages or people who need to be treated as children or dogs, but it had simply been you who had been holding us back all this time. Palmares was a result of quilombos coming together and it will happen again and again for there hundreds of colonies just like my own.
We want recognition as equals to you and all who believe to be
